土豆烧排骨 (braised short ribs with potato)

a family recipe!

This recipe has a similar cooking style as the classic 红烧肉 (red braised pork). The main difference in this recipe is the cut of meat (short ribs instead of pork belly/shoulder), and the ratio of sauces. The classic 红烧肉 is sweeter and has a higher sugar to soy sauce ratio (and no vinegar), while the recipe here is a little more savory. Though the cooking method is very similar, so once you master one, the other is easy to learn!

Ingredients

  • Aromatics
    • Ginger
    • Scallions
    • Garlic
  • Sauces
    • Light and dark soy sauce
    • Shaoxing cooking wine
    • Chinese black vinegar
  • Spices (in order of importance)
    • Star anise
    • Cinnamon stick
    • Sichuan peppercorns
    • Bay leaf
    • Fennel seeds (optional)
    • Dried red chilis (only if you want some heat)
  • Pork short ribs
  • Potatoes (optional, though they are quite delicious)

Blanching the pork: Put the cut short ribs into a pot of cold water, and turn on the fire to medium heat. Add some shaoxing cooking wine, a few slices of ginger, and some sichuan peppercorn to the water. After the water boils, simmer it for a few minutes, then take the meat off the heat and rinse it breifly. The purpose of this is to get rid of impurities on the surface of the meat, and get rid of the undesired proteins in the blood (this is the scum that rises to the top).

Cooking:

Heat your wok to medium heat. When hot enough (i.e., the wok is steaming, if you are using carbon steel) add a neutral oil and the ribs. Stir fry the ribs until a nice golden brown. DO NOT use high heat, otherwise the oil will smoke, your meat will burn, and your smoke alarm will go off. The purpose here is not to get a high temperature sear like with steak (the purpose of searing steak is to get a brown crust without overcooking the inside. For short ribs, since we are braising, we are not worried about overcooking and hence do not need such high heat), but rather to slowly fry it to get a golden brown. Initially, there might be excess water from the boiling step and the meat will not brown immediately. Resist the temptation to blast the meat with heat; once the water is evaporated, the pork ribs will start to brown.

After the pork has been fried, add ginger slices until slightly fragrant (around 5-6 large slices per pound of meat, roughly). Then add the scallion whites and ginger (roughly 6 cloves of ginger, crushed (not diced) and 3 scallions). Stir fry until fragrant.

While stir frying, prepare the sauce. The ratio is 3 parts soy sauce, 2 parts cooking wine, 1 part black vinegar, 1 part sugar. The absolute amount of sauce depends on the amount of meat, but each part might be on the order of 2 tablespoons. If this is your first time, better to start with less sauce. If at the end it is too bland you can add some more sauce, but it is hard to take it away.

Add in the sauce a bit at a time so that it fries in the wok and caramelizes. You want to cook your sauce before adding in water for the braising.

CAUTION: make sure your wok is at a medium heat. Soy sauce burns incredibly fast, so if your wok is too hot (if the oils are smoking, your wok is definitely too hot), the sauce will burn. If you are not very experienced with heat control, you can keep some water nearby so that if your sauce starts to burn, toss in the water quickly to cool it down.

After your sauce is added and you’ve cooked it, add water to cover the ribs and bring it to a boil. You will likely notice that there is scum that rises to the top. You should spoon this out. If you don’t have time to do this, your dish will still be fine, but to someone experienced it will taste a little muddy and gamey (the scum is mostly from blood proteins like hemoglobin and will dissolve back into the broth if you don’t remove it). After your water comes to a boil and you’ve spooned off the scum, you should also remove the aromatics and spices from the broth. This does take some effort, so if you don’t want to do this it is also ok, but the flavor of your broth will just be a little less clean. The aromatics are great at absorbing off-flavors from the meat, so if you don’t remove them, they will dissolve back into the broth.

Spending a bit of time to spoon out most of the scum is quite important. Removing the aromatics and spices is less important if you don’t have time, but does help a bit.

Braising: let the broth simmer for at least 1.5 hours. Towards the end, turn up the heat and reduce the broth until it has the consistency of a sauce (be extra careful not to burn the sauce here). Taste the meat/potatoes. If too bland, you can add some more sauce and reduce. If you are adding potatoes, add in the potatoes in the last 15-ish minutes of braising to cook them.